This week, my students pitched their #GeniusHour projects to the class. After weeks of research and reading, blogging, and a written proposal, they stood up in class (in front of an open elevator image on the board) and told us about their passion, projects, and ideas.

Looking back, I’m envisioning our work in quarters. To start, students brainstorm and research. Their writing is exploratory and open at this point. Then, students begin to narrow their ideas and begin to craft a plan in quarter two. About halfway through, students plans become proposals as they make their goals and outcomes concrete. Then comes the fun part: the ideation, creation, and presentation of genius. All in all, this year’s work will span about four months. Right now, we’re nearing quarter three.

For more great reading about our work with #GeniusHour and #GenreGenius, click here.

Below, find links to students blogs, which should be home to four posts and a proposal so far. We have at least 2-3 more posts planned before the end, which will include more reflection, a synthesis of research, and links to the actual projects.

Throughout #GeniusHour, I always push my students to find experts to help guide their learning. Often, we do this with social media. This year, though, with our focus on genre and stories, it’s a little harder; it will take a little more planning to make meaningful. In the meantime, I’ll be sharing my students’ blogs with the world and asking you, faithful reader, for comments, feedback, and ideas.

Help my students learn and grow. Suggest reading and ideas for their work. Share their blogs with your students, teacher friends, and PLNs. Thanks in advance for your support and guidance.

I always tell my students that all of us are smarter than one of us, and in the authentic work of #GeniusHour, it’s always rewarding to expose them to the power of being connected, of following your passions, and of creation.

How do you help students develop and share work for authentic audiences? How can I make the sharing of our #GeniusHour work more meaningful? Please share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

See the icons in the logo image above? The pants, leaf, megaphone, light bulb, apple, and stethoscope? I drew them with Google’s new AutoDraw tool.

Maybe some of them look familiar, faithful reader. If so, it’s because I attempted to redraw the very same icons I’ve used in recent logos on #Schoenblog posts: a pen, fire, arrows, a lightbulb, apple, and stethoscope

AutoDraw uses machine learning to predict what you are trying to draw and match it to artists’ submissions. So while my pen and fire might have turned into pants and a leaf, my quick sketch of an apple matched perfectly. AutoDraw gave me options to choose from as I drew each image, predicting and matching my movements.

The tool’s about page explains, “AutoDraw is a new kind of drawing tool. It pairs machine learning with drawings from talented artists to help everyone create anything visual, fast. There’s nothing to download. Nothing to pay for. And it works anywhere: smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, etc.”

AutoDraw in Education

How often do we ask students to represent things visually? AutoDraw is a great tool to help students develop visual iconographies. Whether it’s used to help develop sketchnotes, depict scenes from literature, represent a cell, or storyboard historical events, I can think of so many uses for the simple visuals that AutoDraw helps create.

While it’s machine learning features may take away from some elements of student creativity, it provides a valuable and easy way to get students started in creative or visual tasks online. Plus, it’s free and works on every device. You can also use the basic drawing features, add text, change colors, and more.

In an age where more and more we need to teach students about digital citizenship and acceptable use, AutoDraw helps us create. Although the tool matches our sketches to other artists icons, these creations appear to be copyright free. On the Control Alt Achieve post, Using Google AutoDraw for Sketchnotes, Infographics, Drawings, and More, Eric Curts notes that when artists submit their artwork to AutoDraw, they have to agree that "Drawings are my own and Google may use my drawings for any purpose." The AutoDraw about page also describes the tool as free and for everyone. I’m eager to see more clarity on copyright and fair use here, but this has a lot of potential for our students--and beyond.

Blogging & Branding

I spend a lot of time--too much probably--thinking about how this site looks and feels. In fact, a huge update to the #Schoenblog is coming very soon. One of my intentional decisions over the last year has been to brand my blog posts with a title image; each one is sized for Twitter, and they follow a similar aesthetic. In the beginning, I worried about finding other people’s artwork or ideas to help influence my look. Lately, though, I’m much more interested in simple visual iconography--just like I attempted in this post’s title.

I want to be more aware of the visual branding for this site and for how I use images or art from other sources. A tool like AutoDraw helps me be in control by evolving my ideas into simple open source icons that are easy to use. I can download them as .png files and import right into my favorite image editor. It’s free, easy, and efficient.

There’s a lot of potential for AutoDraw, and definitely room to explore more tools for creation, visual aids, and graphic design, both in and out of the classroom.

How might you use AutoDraw in your classroom or professional practice? What other tools for creating simple visuals and icons do you use already? Please share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

Failure is a natural part of the learning process. We don’t always know the answers and have to struggle productively through failure to achieve real learning and growth. But our schools aren’t made for failure. How do we balance the world of grading and standards with a culture of risk taking, innovation, and intellectual failure? As a teacher, it’s a challenge to deal with any failure, and even more so to determine the reasons behind it. Failure as the first attempt in learning is a great thing, but how can we be sure about the difference between that failure and failure from effort, care, or completion. And how should we respond differently? Or should we?

These are some of the questions and issues I’ve grappled over the past few years as my policies and philosophy on student failure and revision has evolved. In short, I’ve tried to emphasize the learning process over the product by focusing on peer and self editing, reflection, and growth. Students can revise any and all work, earn the highest grade possible, and demonstrate their best learning--but only after coming to extra help.

Overall, this policy has led to more and more students coming to extra help and showing real growth in what they know and what they can do. But if a student doesn’t turn in work, doesn’t come to extra help, or doesn’t meet the basic requirements, they do not earn credit. Overall, I like this policy and have found it effective. Students are doing more, have more ownership over their learning, and are more accountable, too. But what happens to those students who don’t turn in, show their learning, or have that growth?

#LHRICTLI Responds to Failure

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending my local technology conference, LHRIC’s Tech Expo. The event featured around thirty presentations from local educators sharing their best practices and challenges. The keynotes for they day were Kevin Brookhouser and James Sanders, and I was so excited to learn from them. Throughout their keynotes and the day’s sessions the topic of failure came up again and again. I’ll share some keynote highlights through participants’ Tweets below.

Kevin spoke about failure in #20time projects, discussing our need to create and iterate. Failure is a natural part of the learning process. James spoke about his own failures in the classroom, all of which he learned and grew from. Without embracing failure, #BreakoutEDU would not exist.

These conversations led me back to my questions above: how can we embrace failure in our classrooms? And not just in the big philosophical idea, but in our day-to-day practice as classroom teachers?

Failure is an Option

“Failure is an option. Failure to turn in is not.” Kevin Brookhouser shared this idea in his keynote, which was complemented by James Sander sharing, “Done is better than perfect.”

These ideas are so antithetical to our traditional education system; I’ve heard them a million times but still need to write this post to process them. I’m all for embracing failure and helping student improve and grow through the learning that’s “done” but how do we overcome the challenge of failure to turn in? How do we create a culture of learning where students aren’t missing assignments, or where teachers aren’t okay with the idea of failure to turn in? And how do we hold everyone accountable to that new world?

Right now, I have 40 Of Mice and Men essays to read and respond to on Google Classroom. I know that there are 2-3 that aren’t ready yet: they don’t follow directions, have major issues with writing, or have some problematic ideas. But they’re done. They’re turned in. A week ago, I might not have responded to these until the students came to extra help. And if they don’t come to extra help, the essay might hang in a grading limbo.

I believe in these ideas but am stuck on how to move forward with them in the schools that exist today. If nothing else, Kevin and James motivated me to rethink that response and to celebrate the work that’s turned in, but is that enough? I’m not looking for perfect--but still struggle with the massive leaps between turned in, done, and successful work.

In the end, though, it’s conversations like these that lead to purposeful growth and evolution in our practices, teaching, and learning. I appreciate these ideas for my students and wonder if in five years, I’ll look back on this as my own failure in learning and growth. Until then, help me to help my students by commenting or responding on Twitter with your ideas on failure.

How should teachers respond to failure? How should we respond differently to failure from failure to turn in? And how can we overcome the failure to turn in so that we can truly embrace meaningful failure? Please share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

Five minutes. Twenty slides. Fifteen seconds. The Ignite format (learn more at http://www.ignitetalks.io) is rigid in its structure but has so much potential in our schools. In your average presentation, the presenter controls the pace, whether it’s students in our classrooms or facilitators for professional learning. But with an Ignite, the pace is predetermined; instead, the presenter focuses on the story.

I’ve had the privilege of giving two Ignite talks over the past year. Last month, I participated in a series of Ignites at my local PNW BOCES, discussing deweaponizing grades and improving student reflection in our classrooms. Find my talk below, and the slides at the bottom of this post. A few months earlier, I had the pleasure of giving a talk at Google for New Visions Cloud Lab--I wrote all about it in Never Grade Again! My New Visions Ignite Talk.

With the format again fresh in my head, I can’t help but reflect on its potential. First and foremost, a good Ignite talk requires a story--the presenter needs to hook the audience with a message, story, or theme about the topic. I don’t want to talk about technology, but about how technology has redefined relationships with my students, for examples. More than that, I want to share the specific stories of the students who helped me learn a lesson or make a change. I want to connect on an emotional level first.

And whether the presenter is an adult or kid, teacher or student, learning to connect with an audience is essential. Storytelling, empathy, and understanding your audience matters in and out of our schools.

After the story come the fundamentals: good presentation skills, rehearsal, a strong script, pacing, and most of all, expert knowledge. Because the slides move on their own, the presentation can’t stop for anyone--the pressure is on the presenter to be the presentation with the slides as a tool to tell the story. It’s hard to read off the slides before a 15 second transition. A good presenter can be flexible and adapt, and can absolutely use the slides to highlight key ideas, quotes, or examples, but it’s really the speech that matters most. A good talk without the slides can have impact, but there’s few things worse than a presentation that’s all about the slides or could have been an e-mail.

Right now, my students are working on brainstorming their Genius Hour projects in #GenreGenius. After spring break, they will deliver elevator pitches, sharing their passions and plans. While I’ve loved their work and learning over the past two years of these projects, I haven’t been as successful in planning for them to present and share their learning with authentic audiences. I’ve considered TED Talks, or something similar, and am now fascinated by the Ignite format as a possible way to share our genius.

In fact, I’d love to see more Ignite-style talks throughout education. Whether it’s the exact format or not, we could all benefit from sharing stories about our challenges and successes in short, focused, and purposeful presentations. Let’s use Ignite talks to inspire meaningful conversations and learning for both teachers and students. We are all experts in something, and five minutes is the perfect amount of time for us all to share our genius.

Share your experience with the Ignite format. How do you think it could be used with teachers and students? Please share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

About Me

Adam is a high school teacher, technology coach, Google for Education Certified Trainer, and EdD candidate. He is one of the National School Board Association's “20 to Watch” Educational Technology Leaders for 2016. He is also the co-founder of The Education Calendar, a crowdsourced map and calendar of education events worldwide. Adam teaches in New York in a 1:1 Chromebook classroom and blogs about teaching and educational technology at aschoenbart.com. He can be reached at aschoenbart@gmail.com and would love to connect on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.